Zorba the Greek Changes Partners

Greek DancersUnless you are an American with Greek roots, you probably didn’t notice that voters in Greece elected what is called a “far-left populist party.” The voters favored a government for the average citizen, not the bankers. They saw the past government as too interested in cutting as much government spending as possible in order to pay debts, no matter the harm to average citizens.

This kind of policy is called “austerity” and was demanded by the European Union for loaning the Greek government money to keep it going. It was hoped that austerity would promote economic growth by cutting spending. As it turned out, massive unemployment from the job cuts offset any growth.

Past Greek governments borrowed more than they should. Also, of course, creditors lent more than they should. Corruption leading to massive avoidance of taxes by the wealthy contributed as well. Those are legitimate targets for fixing.

But citizens in a democracy will take only so much unemployment and austerity, especially if they perceive that the wealthy are not paying their fair share. They will then search for relief at the voting polls. As the Greeks did.

 

Why THE SILVER CHAIR by C.S. Lewis Is My Favorite of the Narnia Series

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis tells of two children helping a prince escape a dark witch’s underground kingdom. It includes my favorite Lewis character, Puddleglum, a gloomy marsh creature.

Despite Puddleglum’s ongoing pessimism, he’s the one who stays the course, an encourager. He rallies the children when they are caught, forever it seems, in the underground kingdom, wondering if an outside world really does exist.

The witch taunts the children. She says this outside world is only make believe.

Puddleglum answers: “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun . . . Suppose the black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. … four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world.”

I don’t think the scene is telling us to forgo our reason. It does mean, to me, that faith—in the superiority of goodness over badness, of love over hatred, of mercy over revenge—is worth holding on to. We still grieve over horrible tragedies, and doubts are a part of any pilgrim’s life. But we hold on to and practice the good things, out of season as well as in.

We get no credit for faith in goodness when times are going well. We demonstrate our real character when we hang on to the good things when the times are out of kilter.

 

Don’t Think You Owe Me Any Favors Just Because I’m Supporting Your Campaign With a Few Million Dollars

Does anyone remember when Senator John McCain pushed election campaign reform? People’s eyes glazed over. How short-sighted we were.

To decry money’s power is not to encourage class warfare or demonize the wealthy. Rather, it is to understand the lure of money and the human temptation to want it. If our laws allow money to be spent freely with, in many cases, no information on who’s funding which candidate, our politicians will favor laws which benefit those who give them money, not the average citizen.

Some who study the progress of democracy in the world claim the United States no longer is, in fact, a democracy. They point to the power of money to call the shots in our elections.

How to change this mockery of democracy? Some candidates will support reform if they know people want reform AND will bother to vote for candidates favoring it. A large turnout of voters is more likely to vote in officials who favor election reform than a smaller turnout, which tends to favor the status quo.

In the last national election, only about a third of eligible voters bothered to make that trip to the polls.

 

Maybe the Digital Age Began When Pens Became Obsolete

In the novel Gutenberg’s Apprentice, by Alix Christie, the protagonist, Peter Schoeffer, a scribe in the year 1450, is shown a few printed pages, heralding a new age of inexpensive books. His father, a businessman, is excited and is considering investing in this new business of printing books. Printing would mean the end of copying them with pen and ink. He asks how long it would take Peter to scribe a copy of these pages by hand.

Peter not only can scribe manuscripts quite rapidly, but he is proud of his profession as well. It would take him, he says, two days, at most.

His father responds: a half dozen copies can be “printed,” a new word, in the time it takes Peter to scribe one with pen and ink. And in an instant, Peter sees the eventual end of his profession, the profession that created beautiful works of art.

In those few paragraphs is the pattern of a story stretching through today. Computers, the Internet, and countless digital inventions strike down the old, both good and bad. They create the new, both good and bad.

Old beauty was lost, but the ability of anyone who could read to buy books and exchange ideas was born. Though artists learned how to create beauty in printed form, too, something was lost. Something was gained. As it is today.

 

Let’s See, Why Are We in the Middle East Again?

When I worked at the U.S. consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, I often visited the nearby Saudi Aramco oil complex. I was told that the first productive oil well, Dammam No. 7, struck in the mid 1930’s by U.S. oilmen, was still flowing. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know, but many other wells certainly were. They produced the black gold that grew a fortune for Saudi Arabia.

Until the discovery of oil, the United States had little interest in the Middle East. World War II called for oil to fuel war efforts. Then followed the American love affair with suburbs and the automobile.

The Mideast had oil, and we wanted it. A half century later, we were in the midst of oil wars and terrorism. Now Arab protestors want change, but brutal dictators don’t want them to have it.

We yearn for a perfect solution or merely to forget about the place. But harsh events draw us back. Baggage from our past involvement prevents us from walking away.

We are annoyed because easy solutions can’t be found. It challenges our can do attitude. We thought we could solve the problems of Afghanistan and Iraq as easily as we invent digital gadgets.

We broke the Taliban (so we thought) in Afghanistan and brought down Saddam’s Iraq. Unfortunately, we began wars in both places with little knowledge about the history of the region and its multitude of tribes and languages and its ancient hatreds.

Why should we be surprised at the ethnic mayhem that resulted?

 

Becoming Our Enemy

 

Strange how we sometimes become what we fight against. Some Protestants, freed by grace from what they perceived as a legalistic church of works, developed their own legalistic ways to salvation.

As a child, listening to a preacher click off the “steps” to become a Christian, I wondered whether I had repented enough. Was I sorry enough for my sins? My simple realization of finding Jesus wasn’t enough. It didn’t fit someone else’s way of finding Jesus.

Revolutionaries can become the governments they replace. I lived for a while in the North African country of Algeria. Algeria continues to suffer from the aftermath of its revolution against France half a century ago. After gaining freedom, Algerian freedom fighters became more despotic than the colonial power they supplanted.

The early Puritans sailed to the New World to free themselves from the established church. Yet they soon developed a theocracy to rival the one they left.

Today’s freedom is threatened by tomorrow’s tyranny the minute we think we have arrived.

 

Losing/Winning the Super Bowl; Losing/Winning Elections

So the Seattle Seahawks lost the Super Bowl in a heartbreaker. This part of the world is in mourning. Folks have been living and breathing Super Bowl mania for, it seems, years, even before the Hawks went to the 2014 Bowl.

New England, of course, is ecstatic. They’ll be having the parades Seattle had last year (when the weather allows).

Elections resemble sports events. When I was young, winning both elections and sports contests was more important to me than winning is now. Especially with elections, I’ve seen too many defeats turn into later victories and victories descend into defeat. The United States hasn’t missed an election since the country began them back in the eighteenth century, so there’s always next time.

It’s the work in between that’s important. So can we stop obsessing about who’s going to run late in 2016?

 

Why I Had My Children Vaccinated

The only available vaccine I remember in my early childhood was against typhoid fever. A great aunt had caught the disease in her teen years and almost died. My mother made sure my brother and I were vaccinated against it.

I contracted whooping cough when I was a few months old. I caught it from my brother who caught it from school classmates. I don’t remember the illness, of course, but my mother certainly did. She remembered listening to the “whoop” of two children struggling to breathe, fearful she would lose them.

I remember the measles I got when I was three or four. Mine was a mild case. My brother’s case was quite serious. He lay for days in a darkened bedroom to avoid harm to his eyes.

When I was about two, my parents cut short our family vacation. I had developed fever and vomiting, and they were terrified that I might have caught polio from an outbreak not far from where we were staying. Fortunately, I did not have polio, and years later, my mother’s voice still reflected relief when she told of that time.

I have vague memories of a funeral for a neighborhood child who died of polio. I remember pictures of children encased in “iron lungs,” the mechanical devices that breathed for them for however long it took to recover chest muscles paralyzed by polio.

When the polio vaccine became available, my mother rushed us to the nearest vaccination center. It came too late for a classmate, who had caught the disease earlier and walked now with a twisted leg.

Of course I brought my children to the doctor for vaccinations against those diseases.  I didn’t want to know the fear my mother knew.

 

Trapping Bunnies

I take a break from politics in the other Washington (DC) to observe those of my hometown’s city government. That would be Langley, Washington, population somewhere between 1,000 and 1200.

The town council meetings are lively at times—heated arguments over building an elevator, or maybe a funicular, from the harbor up the bluff to the town center. What changes should we allow to historic buildings? How do we manage parking in an increasingly crowded downtown? Should we allow portable food wagons within the city? If so, all year or just in the summer? And so on.

Recently, Langley has experienced a growing problem with our rabbit population. Some of the town’s citizens are irked because the bunnies enjoy munching on landscaping and vegetable plants in their yards. Many others defend the creatures.

The mayor says the town is not going to become involved in euthanizing or otherwise harming the bunnies. “It would upset too many of our citizens,” he says. He obviously knows which side his political bread is buttered on.

Too bad election to national public office requires the contributions of wealthy individuals in the billions of dollars. Otherwise, elected officials in the other Washington might listen to their less wealthy constituents the way our council members do to Langley’s citizens.

 

A Left-Handed Christian in the Religiously Right-Handed World

A Sense of MissionI have difficulty pinpointing where the ideas for my stories come from. A Sense of Mission, my favorite, is the only one written in first person.

At one point, Kaitlin, the main character, says “I felt as if I were a left-handed Christian in the world of the religiously right-handed.”

Maybe that was the germ for the story. I often feel like a left-handed Christian. I suppose most of us, Christian or not, feel out of synch with the drummer at times. For one thing, I’m too serious. My mother was always encouraging me to “get out and have some fun.” To this day, “getting out” requires effort. Sometimes I should exert the effort. Too easy for a writer to stay stuck in solitude.

But sometimes solitude is what I need. I no longer apologize for that. The choice is not cut and dried. Whether we crave solitude or the next party, we strive for the right balance.

Kaitlin, whose life circumstances were far different from mine, found her way. She took wrong turns, for all the best reasons, but finally discovered how to live as she was meant to live.

I doubt any of us has a perfect life, though some seem more blessed than others. Regardless, write with the hand given you.

 

What Do You Know About Our Immigration System?

Amy Chua, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the United States, wrote an article several years ago, which I found the other day. According to the article, Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, believes in our immigration program—but with changes. She suggested that our immigrant visas award ability and job skills needed by the U.S., more than family preference, as it does today.

As a U.S. visa officer overseas, I interviewed applicants for immigrant visas to the United States, leading to permanent residence here. Those visas were typically awarded to a wage earner, a spouse, and minor children. Others went to brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, unrelated to job skills.

Chua believes the practice of sibling immigration tends to keep immigrants in enclaves instead of assimilating more quickly into the country’s culture.

I favor, as Chua does, the elimination of sibling visas (after current ones in the pipeline pass through) and their replacement with an increase in immigrant visas related to job skills that are in short supply. Spouses and minor children would continue to be included.

In addition, entries to the U.S. should also include refugees. “Huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are part of our national fabric.

Fairness also should guide our decisions about undocumented residents. Many of them have been here for years and are contributing valuable skills. Some were brought here as children, have assimilated into American culture, and are studying toward college degrees.

[Amy Chua’s article was printed in the Seattle Times on February 3, 2008.]

 

American Atrocities at Abu Ghraib and the Paris Murders

According to news reports, one of the terrorists involved in the January 7 attacks on journalists and a kosher market in France was angered years earlier by pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities.

Americans appear to have forgotten those images of U.S. soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners in 2003. Prisoners were stripped naked, forced into humiliating positions, and otherwise inhumanely treated. The resulting scandal tarnished the reputation of the United States as a defender of human rights. China noted the hypocrisy of our issuance of human rights reports, detailing abuses in virtually every country on the globe, when we, obviously, have our own problems.

Nothing excuses terrorist murders, but sins (and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were certainly sins) tend to breed consequences spilling over into later suffering of innocents.

The talk of American exceptionalism signifies nothing if we don’t acknowledge that we have failings. Repentance for such failings is not a sign of weakness but a path toward a stronger nation.

 

Education or Welfare?

At one time in my life, I worked for The Coca-Cola Company as a computer programmer. During a training course, we toured a bottling plant. I was amazed at the small number of workers needed to operate it.

Over the years, inventions from tractors to bottling machines to computers have revolutionized our ways of making a living. The days are long gone when most workers earned a living on a farm or in a factory. Even white collar jobs like paralegal work may be performed by computers.

Nothing in our postmodern lives presumes to take the place of parents for teaching life skills like self-discipline and curiosity, but our educational system bears the responsibility for teaching vocational skills.

Michael Moritz, a successful investor in many Silicon Valley enterprises, has donated much of his fortune to educational institutions. In an interview for Foreign Affairs (January/February 2015), he talks of government’s responsibility “to provide a fantastic educational system so that people have the skills and wherewithal to be able to make a living for themselves in a world where manual labor is no longer valued.”

Such education requires funding. Are we willing to pay for it? Or do we want to see more aimless, unemployed citizens? Your call.

 

The Dilemma of Having Convictions and Acting Stupid

“Generally speaking, I like the people in favor of abortion better than I like the ones against it, but I`m on the side of the people against it.”
—Andy Rooney, Chicago Tribune, 1985

In his thought-provoking book, Vanishing Grace; Whatever Happened to the Good News? Philip Yancey further quotes Rooney: “I’ve decided I’m against abortion . . . But I have a dilemma in that I much prefer the pro-choice to the pro-life people. I’d much rather eat dinner with a group of the former.”

Why did Rooney find so much to dislike among card carrying Christians? In the case of abortion, at least, it didn’t spring from being on the wrong side of an issue that passionately stirs them.

Maybe it’s because Christians sometimes act like spoiled children upset at being replaced by younger siblings. Christian culture is no longer the favored child.

Christians now are asked to explain themselves: How did the South become the Bible Belt even though its pre-Civil War white Christian citizens accepted slavery as God’s will? Why, when slavery was abolished, did they create segregation? Why do some Christians become ballistic over climate change instead of allowing reasonable debate? Spew hatred of gays? Identify so closely with politics that they draw harsh lines against those with different political opinions?

Quoting Yancey again: “The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree.”

 

Lesson from Charlie Hebdo: Be Angry But Sin Not

I doubt I would ever have read Charlie Hebdo even if French were my native language. Some of its offerings appear, IMHO, unnecessarily offensive. Nevertheless, I am appalled at the murders at the headquarters of the French journal, as are those who tweet “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie).”

Hopefully, few of us will kill because of our disagreement with another—but many of us listen to lies about them, or half truths, or intemperate accusations. We are thus a party to the incivility and political dysfunction that permeates this age. Perhaps Charlie Hebdo even contributed to this atmosphere.

Anger is not necessarily bad in itself. It’s how we handle our anger that counts. To understand someone does not erase our disagreement with him or her. It does prevent rancor and destroy hatred.

 

College Dorms, Nunneries, and Monasteries

In my senior year in college, I became engaged to be married. My friends in the women’s dorm celebrated by throwing me in the shower. The ritual was practiced every time one of us in the dorm became engaged.

We spent a lot of gab time, too, into the late hours or on weekends. We developed friendships and shared our hopes.

I remember those days when I think about women and men who miss some of that non-romantic, same sex friendship by pairing off into couples too early.

I didn’t grow up in a Christian tradition that called some into “vocations” as lifetime disciples of the church, practicing celibacy. Still, those ancient traditions might offer ideas for young and new adults.

Young women and men could be guided into adulthood within a community of their own sex for a few years, perhaps overseen by caring adults. A kind of community to practice discernment, if you will.

The calling would not be permanent for most, though a few might remain in the community. It could provide a place for those singles who choose less than lucrative careers to serve others, who want encouragement to lead a life less devoted to consumerism. It could also offer a refuge for those attempting to find their place after a divorce or other loss.

The trail from childhood to adulthood winds longer in our developed societies. Perhaps an intermediate community after the family could aid some to better negotiate the transition.

 

Two-Parent Families Stage a Comeback—in Seattle?

Seattle familySeattle is a hip city, known for the nation’s highest minimum wage, recycling, and the number of young educated elites moving in. Odd that recent census data shows Seattle with the highest percentage of children in married-couple households in the fifty largest cities in the U.S. (Seattle Times, December 28, 2014)

Seattle edged out more conservative urban areas like Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs. Seattle is one of only three cities that has increased the percentage of married households since 2000. (Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia, cities with a large percentage of urban professionals, also showed increases.)

One reason, observers say, is that couples in Seattle tend to be highly educated with well-paying jobs. This would suggest that if we want to encourage family stability, we should provide quality education for all our children and jobs with adequate wages for their parents.

 

American Prosperity Through the Family Photo Album

Wilhite Family 1An ancient photograph inherited from my mother shows her mother’s family gathered for a family photo on their farm in Tennessee. One child is barefoot. Grim faces stare at the viewer.

Wilhite Family 2Also passed down is another photo portraying most of the same family members grown older, with spouses and children. They are now nicely dressed like any middle-class family of the time would be. All, including the children, wear shoes. Their greater prosperity is apparent.

That progression of pictures depicts the journey of many Americans from the late 1800’s through most of the twentieth century. The story is of whole generations lifted from a subsistence lifestyle.

Today, figures indicate not just a halt to that growth but a reversal. Inequality has also increased between the wealthy and the rest of Americans. These trends were in place before the recession that began in 2008.

As the employment rate picks up, we need to insure that the wages of working Americans support a decent standard of living.

 

How I Found My Way Back to Christmas in an Islamic Country

I don’t remember the details of the Christmas after I turned thirteen. Probably the season passed as it always had. Trimming the tree, star on top. Presents secretly wrapped and joining others under the tree. Reading the Christmas story from the book of Luke under the mantel lights in the living room. Our traditional foods, including boiled custard.

No doubt I would have remembered more if I’d known that my father would die before the winter was over.

The next Christmas, my mother and my brother and I didn’t celebrate Christmas at home. We feared it would be too reminiscent of the last one with my father. We traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, and stayed in a motel. No Christmas tree. No boiled custard. Probably we exchanged presents, but I don’t remember them. We took a walk along the beach, but we couldn’t swim because the weather turned too cold. That’s the way it was. Cold and dreary.

Eventually, we would adjust and celebrate Christmas at home. Nevertheless, for me, the magic was gone.

Years later I spent several Christmas seasons in Muslim majority countries where the Santa Claus kind of Christmas did not exist. Instead, I gathered with a few expatriate Christians for small celebrations. We had an amateur concert of Christmas carols one year, I remember.

I began to see that Christmas had nothing to do with Christmas trees or presents or boiled custard. I’m not against a Christmas that includes these things. I enjoy the story of Scrooge and movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But they’re not Christmas.

Christmas is just one day of the Christian calendar. It’s the beginning. Ultimately, it leads to the Crucifixion. Joy in Christmas is always mixed with a little sadness.

Christmas is not a joyous time for all, but that’s okay. Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us for all times.

 

Blessed Are the Debonair

“Blessed are the meek,” the New Testament book of Matthew states. Who in the world wants to be meek? The word has connotations of a doormat type of submissiveness. Where’s the blessedness in a person like that?

During my days of studying French, I bought a Bible in the French language. To aid the learning process, I compared well-known verses in English and French. In the French version, “meek” is translated “debonair.” Now that’s a bright, cheerful word, lacking the usual connotations associated with meek.

According to my French dictionary, debonair means good natured or kindly. According to my English dictionary (OED), debonair means “confident, stylish, and charming.”

My guess is that when Jesus suggested a meek person, he meant someone who is confident enough to focus on others rather than oneself, to put them at ease, and to know concern for their interests.